The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw a profusion of archaeological discoveries in Egypt which led to the period being dubbed the 'Golden Age' of Egyptology. While much of this archeological activity is tremendously important and well-known, less known yet equally significant are the personal histories of those present in Egypt during this time. The letters of Helen Winlock, wife of the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Egyptian Expedition, provide an intimate window into daily life and thought in the context of early twentieth century excavations. From bugs in the food and exploding furniture, to racially prejudiced observations of the locals and the difficulty of finding formula for a newborn child in the desert, each of Helen's many letters sheds light on the quotidian and mundane aspects of life in this often-sensationalized period. Her writings demonstrate the intersectiosn of race, gender, and colonial power in this time and place, as Helen's comments about herself, other women, and other peoples around her demonstrate the complicated politics of knowledge in this 'Golden Age' created and maintained. As a research intern in the Emma B. Andrews Diary Project, I have transcribed dozens of Helen Winlock's letters. Working from scans of the original handwritten letters, my role in transcribing these letters is a foundational first step in the process of creating digital editions of these documents, which will include versions encoded in XML, following Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines. This will facilitate the investigation of the archive using computational methodologies. Our team includes faculty, students and librarians from multiple departments across the University of Washington. This interdisciplinary and collaborative digital humanities project seeks to make a wide range of unpublished or inaccessible primary sources from the period freely available to scholars in an online format. 

This project examines what legal writings from ancient Rome reveal about the political ideology, social values, and power dynamics in Roman history. I focus on these concepts through analyzing selections from two sets of speeches given by Cicero, a politician, loyal proponent of the Roman Republic, and philosopher educated in both Latin and Greek. Additionally, I explore the scholarship on Roman legal history to provide supplementary cultural context. The sociopolitical climate of the late Roman Republic was tumultuous. Near the beginning of Cicero’s political career, he gave a set of orations, In Catalinam, to the Senate that accused Catiline of conspiring against the consuls. Much later, Cicero tried to keep the Republic alive after Caesar’s assassination and accused Mark Antony of being disloyal to Caesar by wanting to create an empire. This urge to defend the Republic prompted Cicero to write his Philippicae to attack Mark Antony. These orations ultimately resulted in Cicero’s death, as Mark Antony wanted, and the Republic ended. My research compares Cicero’s In Catilinam 1, 2, and 4 and Philippicae 4, 5, and 14: both sets involve murder plots, denunciations of powerful men, and the senatus consultum ultimum decree for Republican emergency. Specifically, I analyze how Cicero uses oratory to convince the Senate to declare Catiline and Mark Antony as public enemies. This process reveals elements of Roman sociopolitical culture, such as values, threats, and legal procedures, and follows these differences in this short, but crucial, time period in Roman legal and governmental history. Furthermore, it demonstrates the complexity between the government and the conflicting political ideologies during the late Roman Republic. Thus, through detailed analysis of these selected passages and their wider contexts, I explore how the Catilinarian and Philippic orations use references from Rome’s earlier history to adapt to, and reflect, their particular moments.

Traditionally, scholars of ancient Greco-Roman culture have focused narrowly on the lives of elite Greek and Roman men, failing to capture the experiences of non-elite men, women, slaves, and the indigenous populations that came into contact with Greeks and Romans. In fact, these groups together composed the majority of the ancient populations. This project asks if archaeological evidence related to food can illuminate how indigenous peoples reacted to Greek and Roman colonization. It takes as its case study the ancient site of Jerash (in what is modern-day Jordan), which during the second century BCE to the second century CE experienced a period of rapid growth, development, and colonization from the Greeks and then Romans. To answer the research question, the project collects and analyzes data from existing archaeological reports, focusing on food infrastructure such as market facilities and items associated with feasting and banquets across nearly all social strata. It then puts this archaeological evidence into dialogue with recent scholarship on colonialism in the ancient Greco-Roman world. The preliminary results of this research provide evidence of indigenous populations responding to colonization by assimilation. For example, excavated burial goods related to drinking parties are similar to those found elsewhere in the Greek world, and the food market is similar to Roman food markets of previous centuries. These findings, though not comprehensive, show that Greco-Roman practices related to food, introduced into ancient Jordanian culture during colonization, remained even after the period of colonization. Further work includes expanding the data set, as additional scholarship concerning floral and faunal remains from Jerash is forthcoming. 

Although curable, tuberculosis (TB), remains a global health threat. The long (6-9 months) daily antibiotic regimen is one of many challenges for patients and providers in completing treatment. Patient-centered innovative strategies are recommended that promote self-management and support during TB treatment. The World Health Organization endorses mHealth, mobile devices facilitating health information/services, as an under-explored area of potential patient-centered strategies. To help address this gap, Dr. Iribarren with her team iteratively developed a mobile application (app) with end-users and experts. 42 patients underwent pilot testing in Argentina, randomly assigned to use the app or not. The app includes daily medication tracking, symptom tracking, a paper based test-strip to detect the presence of drug metabolites in urine and resources surrounding treatment and disease processes. In addition, the intervention supports interactive communication with the participant and the treatment coordinator, a registered nurse. As an honors student, my goal is to gain insight on how the 20 patients assigned to use app are engaging through qualitative analysis of the interactive communication within the text-intervention using Atlas.ti. A codebook was iteratively built to classify the types of interactions and define with representative quotes. The main participant themes surrounded questions on side effects and medication, reinforcement of good compliance and reasons for not reporting. The relationship between codes are described, for example, the nurse inquiring about missed report(s) triggers a patient response. To understand how experience in treatment affects usage quantitative analysis compared codes by month in treatment showing higher occurrence trends during first two months. This research will inform further refinement of app, with stakeholders in mind. The goal of understanding the communication themes is to suggest areas where adaption to the app could improve ease of use and support for participant while decreasing the burden to treatment supporter through automated responses where appropriate. 
 

Homelessness rates among the adolescent population have steadily risen over the past decade, and homelessness is shown to be correlated with a variety of detrimental outcomes. Though prior studies of this population have focused on participant recruitment as well as the representativeness of samples, there has been little work regarding designing survey content to optimize participant honesty, retention, and willingness to divulge often sensitive details about themselves. As a part of a larger investigation on youth/family engagement with homelessness prevention services, this research project uses youth focus group responses to explore how, in conducting surveys, questions can be worded to increase the likelihood of obtaining an earnest and accurate response. We used data from six focus groups across two locations to gather information from housing instable adolescents. The focus groups presented example research surveys and asked participants to provide responses on whether the survey items were well-received and easy to understand, among other factors. Through a grounded qualitative analysis of the responses provided, we determined that there are topics that have a high probability of causing confusion and therefore reducing construct validity, or that may cause participants to become guarded because of their sensitive nature. To address these issues, we recommend phrasing questions to be unambiguous by being hyperspecific—for example, asking how often caretakers give praise for good deeds rather than a general question about pride in their children. We also suggest phrasing topics likely to evoke either a strong positive or negative emotional response in a more neutral manner or, when they are not strictly relevant, eliminating the questions altogether—for instance, instead of asking about whether someone is seeing a counselor directly, which could be a source of stigma and shame, asking instead about whether they have a professional that they can trust with their personal issues.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is a progressive, debilitating, neurodegenerative disorder where patients lose their ability to think and carry out tasks. This disease is characterized by aggregation of the β-amyloid (Aβ) peptide. Cannabidiol (CBD) and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are derivatives of marijuana which have been shown to possess neuroprotective properties. Experimental work in this field, is limited in its scope when probing mechanisms driving the phenomenon of Aβ peptide aggregation. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations have been used to understand the intra-peptide interactions and potential impact of cannabinoids. In order to understand the effects of cosolvent structure on the mechanism of amyloid aggregation, we used classical molecular dynamics simulations of Aβ derived switch-peptides in the presence of model cannabinoids (i.e. CBD and THC). Aβ peptides transform from functional peptides into beta-sheets and therefore impact function within the brain. We tracked beta-sheet formation as a function of time to understand if cannabinoids sterically inhibit interactions between and within peptides. Preliminary results indicate that CBD and THC demonstrate a trapping effect on aggregated peptides. The impact of synthetic cannabinoids are much less understood, prompting additional interest in investigating the interactions among these molecules.

Tracing the lineage of individual cells within a multicellular organism has been one of the key struggles of modern developmental biology. The ability to trace the differentiation of individual cells over various timescales would give extensive insight into many fields of biology. Techniques using large scale genomics based on natural DNA mutations have been used in the past. However, in recent years, novel techniques using CRISPR-Cas9, and more recently recombinase, have been developed to study cell lineage in a more precise and dynamic manner. Each of these methods have different specifications in their readout methods, time-dependent resolution, spatial integrity, and accuracy. I have constructed a review summarizing these methods, and will present their impact on dynamic cell lineage tracing. While most of this research has been done in animals, I will also propose a design for cell lineage tracing in plants based on these reviewed methods.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a disorder that is characterized by difficulty in social communication, social skills, and repetitive behavior domains (Sachak, 2016). One of the most prominent features in children with ASD under 3 years of age is delays in language development (Sachak, 2016). This project aims to examine language development in the first year after diagnosis in a sample of preschool children with ASD and to examine family and child demographic characteristics that account for variability in language development. Preschool aged children with ASD (N=59; 7 female) and a matched sample of typically developing (TD) children (N=48; 10 female;) were enrolled in a study of attention and emotion regulation. At enrollment (T1), autism was confirmed using the ADOS module 1 and standardized assessments were done to quantify communication ability (Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales), nonverbal (visual) reasoning (Mullen Scales of Early Learning), expressive and receptive language (Preschool Language Scale), and self-regulation and executive functioning (Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Functioning). The PLS, VAB, and BRIEF were repeated at +6 months and +12 months. We hypothesize that: (1) TD children and ASD children who received language interventions will show greater improvement in functional language skills over the first year compared to ASD children ; and (2) children in families with higher household income or education level (one or more parents with college education) will show greater improvements in functional language skills over the 1 year period. Early childhood represents a critical time window for language interventions in order to support functional/adaptive skills and create greater positive outcomes for children with ASD.